Treasurer
Joe Hockey
has filled his team of audit commissioners with Howard-era economic rationalists, workplace free-marketers, goods and services tax reformists and at least one Liberal political moderate.

With expertise in the GST, workplace relations and the sale of public assets, some of the six appointees named on Tuesday to the National Commission of Audit have been advocates of some of the Coalition’s most controversial policies.

The Business Council of Australia, among business groups, will have the greatest influence on the audit after seconding both its president,
Tony Shepherd
, as chair of the commission, and its chief economist
Peter Crone
as head of the secretariat responsible for working with Finance and Treasury officials.

Mr Crone was senior economic adviser to prime minister
John Howard
from 1997 to 2005, during the time the GST was developed and introduced.

Mr Crone was vocal ahead of the Labor government’s 2011 tax forum about the need to reform inefficient state taxes and said at the time that “further consideration of issues around the GST would make sense".

Boxall also on the team

Economist and former public service head
Peter Boxall
, currently chairman of the NSW Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal, is another Howard government alumnus on the commission.

He was secretary of the then department of resources, energy and tourism – under the Rudd Labor government – and of the departments of employment and workplace relations, and finance and administration, during Mr Howard’s rule. He earlier worked for the International Monetary Fund in the United States and for the Reserve Bank of Australia.

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Dr Boxall is considered an economic dry and freemarket champion who oversaw the Howard government’s contentious WorkChoices policy.

While at Finance, he also supervised the then government’s outsourcing and asset sales push, in which Telstra and the Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth airports were sold off.

A former Howard minister,
Amanda Vanstone
, a South Australian moderate, will consider the political implications of difficult economic decisions. During her time as a cabinet minister, she dealt with the controversial areas of immigration, employment, families and community services.

One of the most pressing areas for reform is how to fund the $140 billion ­welfare system, including the emerging National Disability Insurance Scheme and so-called middle-class payments such as the childcare rebate.

Programs called unsustainable

Critics say the programs are unsustainable, at least in their present form, given the shrinking tax base, but advocates say disability insurance and childcare subsidies are productivity measures that get more people into work.

Two audit commissioners earned their public service expertise before the Howard era.
Tony Cole
, chairman of the Melbourne Institute Economic Forums, is a former Treasury secretary and former deputy-secretary of the PM’s department under the Hawke and ­Keating Labor governments.

Mr Cole is one of dozens of business leaders, economists and public sector experts who believe a review into the reach of the GST is inevitable.

He told The Australian Financial Review in November last year the catalyst for including the GST in genuine tax reform would have to come from a large cross-section of the community, including business and welfare groups, as it had when the Howard government ­introduced the consumption tax.

“It’s inevitable that at some stage we will broaden the base and change the rate," Mr Cole said at the time.

“But if we want politicians to lead, sometimes we’ve got to give them a bit of space to do it," he said.

The other commissioner outside the Howard government alumni is
Robert Fisher
, a Russian-speaking former director-general of the West Australian departments of industrial and regional development and trade, whose trade ­credentials will give an international perspective to federal reforms.